The Zeitgeist Movement Defined
107
become an ever-increasing point of interference over time.
314
Historically, the application of machine technology to labor has been
seen as an issue of not only social progress but also “economic”
progress, in the market sense, mainly due to the increase in
productivity.
The basic assumption is that mechanization (or more broadly
technological innovation) facilitates industrial expansion and hence an
inevitable reallocation of labor displaced by machine into new,
emerging sectors. This is a common defense.
315
Historically speaking,
there appears to be some truth to this, where the reduction of the
human work force in one sector, such as was the case with the
automation of agriculture in the West, has been overcome to a degree
by the advancement of other employment sectors, such as the modern
service sector. However, this assumption that technological innovation
will generate new forms of employment in tandem with those
displaced by it, creating an equilibrium, is actually very difficult to
defend when the rate of change of innovation, coupled with the cost
saving interests of business is taken into account.
316
314 A glance at US historical labor statistics by sector shows the pattern of
machine automation replacing human labor definitively. In the agricultural
sector, almost all traditional workflow is now done by machine. In 1949,
machines did 6% of the cotton picking in the South. By 1972, 100% of the
cotton picking was done by machines. [Source: The Cotton Harvester in
Retrospect: Labor Displacement or Replacement?, Willis Peterson, St Paul,
1991, pp 1-2] In 1860, 60% of America worked in agriculture, while today it
is less than 3%. (Source: Why job growth is Stalled, Fortune, 3/8/93 p.52)
In 1950, 33% of US workers worked in Manufacturing, while by 2002 there
was only 10%. (Source:http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2002-
12-12-manufacture_x.htm) The US steel industry, from 1982 to 2002
increased production from 75m tons to 120m tons, while steel workers went
from 289,000 to 74,000.(Source: Will ‘Made in the USA’ fade away?, Nelson
D. Schwartz, Fortune Nov 24th 2003, p. 102) In 2003, Alliance Capital did a
study of the world’s largest 20 economies at that time, ranging from the
period of 1995 to 2002, finding that 31 million manufacturing jobs were
lost, while production actually rose by 30%. (Source: US Weekly Economic
Update: Manufacturing Payrolls Declining Globally: The Untold Story,
Alliance Bernstein Oct 2003) This pattern of increasing productivity and
profit, coupled with decreasing employment, is a new and powerful
phenomenon.
315 See the subsection on economist David Ricardo in the essay: History of
Economy
316 Economist Stephen Roach warned in 1994, ”The service sector has lost its
role as America’s unbridled engine of job creation.” (Source: Interview,
3/15/94, noted in book The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin, Penguin p.143)
Examples of this include: From 1983-1993, banks cut 37% of their human
tellers, and by the year 2000, 90% of all bank customers used teller
machines (ATMs) (Source: “Retooling Lives”, Vision, 2000 p. 43) Business
phone operators have almost all been replaced by computerized voice
answering systems, post office tellers are being replaced by self-service
machines, while cashiers are being replaced by computerized kiosks.
McDonalds, for example, has been talking about full automation of its